That makes sense - try different ways of presenting options to users, see how people react, make tweaks based on the results. 
It is true some of Zwifts competitors who have gone for a open route approach do suffer as a result from lack of numbers on any one route . Its a fine balancing act to be made here especially since numbers have probably hit high watermarks and are generally receding at this point.
Perhaps the solution will come when someone designs a solution that has better NPC type modelling so routes are better filled even with fewer ārealā riders.
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Iām old enugh to remember the days with the ghost blue zwifters.
Some days thereād be fewer than 100 real people riding at any one time
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This is my strong preference.
I think thatās probably the case. Itās the only reason I can think of anyway. Itās clear that all worlds are available at any time, since people can āworld hackā to them or use them for meetups.
However, how few is ātoo fewā? Back in the early days, there were fewer people on Zwift. The blue bots populated the world in order to make it feel busier. Even at busy times, on some routes you will encounter relatively few riders (any of the longer climbs for example).
Withholding free choice from everyone because of a possible feeling of loneliness for a relatively small number of riders doesnāt seem like the best reasoned choice to me. Iād prefer them to open up the worlds, but add blue bots if the population is below, say, 500.
Heck, they donāt even need to be the old blue bots; they could be wearing proper kit etc. so they look like real people. Most people donāt interact while theyāre riding anyway, so weād be none the wiser for the most part.
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It was recently mentioned that the Pace Partners are now scalable and can be created as necessary on the server (rather than being an ANT simulation running on an internās home PCā¦) so adding random riders in any location should be easy. Just create a few hundred bots on every world and theyāll always look occupied. A toggle to turn them on and off from visibility to the user would be ideal, though presumably a lot more work.
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As MyWhoosh has demonstrated, itās not that hard to have a load of bots roaming around the world and its pretty hard to tell which are bots and which are humans.
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I can see Makuri joining Watopia as a permanent worlds, too much investment not too tbh.
France, New York & London as the 3rd & 4th choice, UCI routes as the 4th (rotated as if one world).
Iād argue France should be expanded to make a 3rd permanent world, it is as popular as Makuri & Watopia.
maybe chuck Crit City and Bolonga in with the UCI worlds rotation.
But the mix will need to balance āI want to be around othersā with āI want to be aloneā, analytics FTW !
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There is, of course, the solution that will make everyone happy and one thatās been on the table for over six years: merge all the worlds together.
If it bothers Strava, just put the real-world courses in the Pacific, next to Watopia.
It will also keep IRL riders happy, Iām sure they love all those Zwifters stealing their real KoMs by riding in central London at 50kph with no trafficā¦ 
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I find this an interesting proposal. This puts more emphasis on the better game-designed worlds and would still allow Zwift to do these collaborations with UCI without the UCI worlds starting to clutter the selection.
I agree on the low numbers.
Iām in NZ too 
I guess Iām one of those, ācouldnāt care if there are people riding around when Iām just training chapsā. In fact the people kinda annoy me. I get stuck on them with sticky draft. For some reason it annoys me. First world problemsā¦
I am concerned with race numbers. The sheer number of races and poor selection of quality races in our time zone is not ideal. We need better races, with less overall volume of options, to increase participation.
And category enforcement!
I think some other commenters have solved the issue. Itās just a presentation issue. A āTodayās Worldsā, say 2 choices on the main page. Then after a few presses, all worlds are available for the soloists. Maybe, with a note that they may be empty.
Something like that would keep us all happy.
Or bots, theyād work for people who need to be around others. Definitely, with the option to turn them off.
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There is a lot of people replying here who are racing; and thatās fine, people use Zwift in the manner they want. I donāt race. I want to ride with other people, not bots. Hence world-sprawl is a concern, in particular world-sprawl of low-quality / not-game-designed worlds: The locations werenāt chosen by the UCI because they were marvelous cycling destinations - they were chosen because those cities were able to host the races.
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I think we understand and are supportive of what you really want.
But this thread , is not about improving the situation and as such its only got 1 vote , its just not going to happen .
The latest request for example for a change to Innsbruck has already got 50 votes (Still may never happen as who knows how much attention is actually paid at ZHQ to votes cast) . and if you read the thread you will see far from it being low quality world more people consider it of the highest quality.
Positive feature requests on how to improve the more virtualized worlds to get the requirements and features wanted much more support and votes.
Similarly improving all worlds including the UCI ones would meet the stated requirements too so having routes possible in all worlds that met what you wanted seems as previously mentioned the inclusive way to get improvement for all . The idea that one world is for one set of users and one world for another , is not very appealing I suspect to the vast majority of people. Although I know it is a advocated philosophy not limited to the virtual world of Zwift these days.
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The UCI worlds provide an interesting and varied set of race courses. IF maintenance is a major drain on resources it might make sense to retire some of them, but if thatās not the case (and no-one has said it is, beyond some idle speculation) then I would certainly prefer to see them remain. 3x up the Innsbruck KOM is something everyone should do once in their lives (but once only)!
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I canāt see that they would need maintenance, as such. Digital assets donāt really degrade over time.
I suppose Richmond getting its update a while back counts as maintenance, but as far as I know no other map has had that sort of face lift.
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It is about improving the situation, by proposing a different approach to reduce sprawl and a strategy to limit it long-term.
This thread has a high number of views and is #3 in the Feedback category based on number of replies and has been regularly replied to since I posted it months ago. And the replies have been varied; some are against my proposal, others have proposed similar strategies.
Sometimes people donāt realise that āless is moreā.
They do. They degrade in comparison to newer worlds and assets that have been based on more game design experience and worked to higher fidelity, and they degrade directly when new technology is added (e.g. in the case of graphics; newer shaders or moving to DX12).
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Thatās not a degradation. Thatās more stagnation.
But thereās no absolute requirement to update those things. Look at WoW for example. Vanilla zones look very dated and low fidelity compared to Shadowlands.
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The way Zwift software dev appears to work, Iād rather them not touch anything. Theyāre bound to break something if they try to delete Bologna or some other less-used map.
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Not really applicable. Iām talking more about textures and 3D models rather than code quality or functionality.
Heheh. Maybe Iāve worked with better PMs, although I donāt really understand your joke that well. It doesnāt seem like a āPM thingā to me. =)